‘We’re not monsters,’ fired 40/40 bouncer says

Ivan Shaq Ramos, of Ocean City, was one of the bouncers who lost his job after a video showed 40/40 Club workers beating patrons.

ATLANTIC CITY — Ivan Shaq Ramos knows he’s a big guy.

His 290-pound, 6-foot-tall frame is usually intimidation enough,
the veteran bouncer said. But in the early morning hours of Nov.
28, size didn’t work.

Ramos was one of several men working security at the 40/40 Club
when a DJ videotaped a brawl outside the club.

“We’re not monsters,” said Ramos, who lost his job along with
several others as a result of the tape. “Nobody knows how it
started. We were protecting the club. We were protecting the
patrons.”

Despite video showing two ousted customers being attacked, he
charges that inside the club, it was Bryant Norwood, 27, who
started the trouble, harassing female patrons.

A lawsuit Norwood’s attorney said was recently filed tells a
different story.

“Mr. Norwood paid $40 at the door to get into the 40/40 Club to
have a good time with his friends, but he ended up being kicked out
and beaten by club employees,” Freehold-based attorney Thomas J.
Mallon wrote in a release. “Fortunately, these bullies didn’t
realize that they were caught in the act on video by a
passer-by.”

Norwood had arrived with friends Tyrell Durant and Leonard
Clark. They were kicked out of the club before 4 a.m. Nov. 28. DJ
Zeke captured what happened next on his phone. The video, first
posted on YouTube, shows a man — identified as Norwood — on the
ground with several guards surrounding him. At least two kick
him.

Then Durant punches a guard, focusing the attention of the dozen
or so men on him. They surround Durant, trying to get him down,
Ramos said. But at one point, a man with braids and a shirt with
“security” across the back, breaks through the group and punches
Durant in the head several times.

When asked about that, Ramos doesn’t comment.

“I’m not going to talk against the guys I worked with,” he
insisted.

The group would meet before work and discuss one aim, he said:
“For everybody to get home to their families.”

Now, many will go home for the holidays without jobs, Ramos
said.

He lost two. Having returned to the 40/40 after time off, Ramos
still had on an “Events Staff” shirt from an earlier job, which
Ramos wouldn’t name.

When his boss there saw the video with the shirt clearly
displayed, Ramos was fired.

Meanwhile, criminal charges still could be brought against the
men involved in the attack. City police still are trying to
identify them. The 40/40 Club has not helped in that matter, police
previously said.

But Ramos insists the group was doing its job. He admits the
situation was not the norm and “escalated,” but said it was the
ousted patrons who started the trouble.

Norwood was harassing women as they tried to go to the ladies’
room, Ramos said.

“I had to grab these women out of his hands,” the bouncer
said.

He gave Norwood a warning, which was not heeded. But when Ramos
and others tried to remove the men, the threats came. Clark then
punched Ramos from behind, according to a complaint Ramos
filed.

Outside, the threats continued, with someone yelling about
getting a gun, Ramos said.

“When you get in a situation like that, the adrenaline does go
up,” he said. “But that’s not the norm. That wasn’t our intention
for that night. It escalated, but it escalated from what happened
(with the patrons) upstairs.”